(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to automated billing systems and, more particularly, to an automated electronic invoicing and payment consolidation system for providing remote customer review of billing information from at least two invoicers.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
Invoicing and payment collection has always been a very labor intensive and paper intensive process. Typically, the process has involved an invoicer, usually a business, who prepares an invoice detailing the goods and services provided and the charges therefor. The invoice is mailed to a customer who verifies the correctness of the invoice and returns a payment coupon of some type along with a paper check to the invoicer. The invoicer then submits the paper check to its bank for payment through; for example, the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network. Other similar payment systems include writing a credit card number, endorsing and preauthorization to draft an account on a monthly basis up to preset limits, such as regularly paying utility bills from a checking account.
With the advent of the Internet, invoicers have expressed the desire for the time-honored process of paper billing and payment to be automated. One approach that is somewhat popular is electronic bill payment services. In this approach, customers receive an invoice that is presented by paper and a separate payment service, often branded by a bank, allows payment to be pushed to the invoicer. The customer takes their paper bill and logs on to an Internet-based service that receives payment instructions resulting in either an electronic payment or, more often, a paper draft that is mailed on behalf of the customer.
This service, while in some ways convenient to the customer, can result in errors, as payment is often received with data irregularities that prevent accurate posting. Further, the customer must still handle the bills in much the same way as before and must actually give instructions to pay earlier, since 3-5 days may be required to perform the payment process. Checkfree is the largest provider of this type of service.
Most industry observers have noted that a more reliable and efficient processing for invoicing is for the customer to receive an electronic version of the invoice with an opportunity to make an electronic payment or dispute individual line items in the same session. To this end, a number of different approaches are known.
One approach is direct invoice presentment and payment as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,044,362 and co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/535,334. This invention established a direct link between customer and invoicer for the presentation and payment of electronic invoices. This technique is preferable to most invoicers in that it provides the strongest branding, flexibility, clarity in support operations, lowest cost and allows the invoicer to maintain current banking relations. However, one disadvantage of this approach is that the customer must access multiple accounts, each with different password and sign up requirements.
Another approach is consolidated bill presentment, whereby invoicers send their raw billing data to a central service that consolidates the data into a list of bills to display to customers of the companies participating with the service. Companies send their data to the consolidating service in a “Push Model.” This is also referred to as “thick consolidation,” as a large database is created, which combines data from many billers into a central service. Such electronic systems are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,383,113, issued to Kight et al.; U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,649,117 and 5,956,700 issued to Landry; U.S. Pat. No. 5,283,829, issued to Anderson et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,220,501, issued to Lawlor et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,465,206, issued to Hilt et al., the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties.
In these electronic billing and payment consolidation systems, the third party's website is the central point of access as customers login to access bills. Often, the third party consolidation service may allow, for a fee, a different organization to brand the page that the invoicers' customers might access. For example, Company A could send its raw billing data to a third party consolidation service and when the customers of Company A's access their invoices, the page would be branded by a bank or an Internet portal. While the invoice presented to the customer would still include Company A's logo, branding of the overall service, enrollment, banner ads, and the service relationship would be controlled by the third party consolidation service and its licensees.
This type of service offers some advantages to invoicers and customers alike. For invoicers, this approach is easy to adopt for a pilot as the service is outsourced and the invoicer need only provide raw billing files to start the process. Also, for the customers, enrollment and password management is simplified and bill review operations can be more efficient, as customers can access one website to see multiple invoices. Although these systems appear to streamline the process, they, in fact, may add a great deal of complexity and no small amount of expense to the process:                First, there are many consolidation services and customers will have distinct preferences in some cases. However, many invoicers feel they are compelled by the marketplace to work with multiple consolidation services to get their bills out to as many places as possible for added customer convenience. Since raw billing data and other reference information must be sent or pushed to different services, extensive operational investments must be made. Specifically, data formats are often different and the invoicer's internal support team must understand the nuances of each service. Also, different banking interfaces and payment posting routines can cause complexity in supporting multiple consolidators. Thus, the potential for cost savings of electronic presentment and payment can often be lost in the complexity.        Second, the service fees charged per invoice by consolidation service providers are often high and, once again, the potential for cost savings can be lost.        Third, branding is often no longer controlled by the invoicer, but is controlled by the third party consolidation service or by whomever purchases the right to re-brand from the third party consolidation service.        Fourth, the invoicer often looses control as to which parties are able to present the invoicer's invoices. In fact, a company that is deemed competitive by the invoicer might facilitate a bill consolidation service that includes bills of the invoicer by virtue of a business relationship with the third party consolidation service. As an example, a mortgage bill from a private financing company might be reviewed by a customer at a third party site re-branded by a competitor bank that also offers mortgage re-financing online through the bank. The banner ads presented on the bank's behalf might result in a loss of the private financing company's customer visiting that third party site.        Fifth, data sent to the third party is time sensitive. Subsequent changes of customer data at the invoicer are not reflected or updated in the electronic invoice presented. The electronic bill consolidation service can quickly become unsynchronized with data at the invoicer causing customer confusion that can lead to expensive user support.        Sixth, customer care is difficult in this environment since relationships may be confused for troubleshooting and support. Problems might result from reformatting or biller and there will be confusion as to the cause and remedy of the problem        Seventh, there is no workable approach to “consolidate consolidators.” That is, it is unlikely that a single third party consolidation service will acquire data from every invoicer of a specific individual service customer. The competitive nature of the market makes it almost certain that an individual will need to log on to more than a single, third party site to review all of their invoices since no single third party consolidator is likely to have enrolled all of a specific individual service customer's invoicers.        
Still another technique for electronic bill presentment and payment is “thin consolidation.” In this model, only summary data is sent or pushed to the central consolidation service. As customers login to see a list of bills and payment options, they can select a navigation option that links them to detailed information located at the invoicer during sessions managed and controlled by the central, third party service. While this approach provides more control to the invoicer over important customer operations, it also has significant drawbacks:                First, the central service largely limits the processing and usage options at the invoicer. For example, registration or enrollment in the service starts with the central service and invoicers do not always get full disclosure of what information was supplied at registration. Requiring enrollment at the consolidation service in many ways passes “ownership” of the customer to the third party consolidation service, rather than the invoicer.        Second, business relationships for payment are dictated by the central service in these models—not at the invoicer. Payment is required through the third party consolidation service.        Third, disputes regarding payment are accomplished at the third party consolidator, creating a difficult process of communication, customer care and reconciliation for the invoicer.        Fourth, invoicers lose branding opportunities and cannot control whom the third party consolidation service can allow to re-brand the service. The consolidated nature of the data in the service makes it difficult to provide an environment whereby its invoice summary could not be displayed by a re-branding portal that may advertise a competitor.        Fifth, thin consolidation, as currently practiced, does not allow the customer to login to see invoice detail directly at the biller, but must always start with the consolidation service.        
An invoicing system should allow invoicers to maintain their direct relationship with customers, yet allows the convenience of simplifying access across multiple sites. Also, customers should be able to easily see a list of summary data from invoices and link to invoicers' sites without the biller giving up control over the process. There also needs to be a simple approach whereby an invoicer can “write once” for multiple publication by alternate access sites. Such a process would allow the invoicer to put summary data for inclusion in a list of bills, and then allow secondary presentment points to retrieve the data (Pull Model) from the invoicer's site for presentment. Invoicers should have means to make their summary data available for the consolidators to retrieve dynamically, rather than the current “push” consolidation technique, to ensure the most current data.
This requires consolidation techniques that preserve the branding of the biller, the customer care relationship, the choice of financial partners and the marketing opportunities of the invoicer. Such a system should not require that the provider of valuable content—in this case invoicers providing bill summary or fall, electronic billing data—to have to pay a third party to take the valuable content—only for that party to sell to additional parties down the line. The system should allow indexing across multiple direct sites that provides convenience to customers without removing important operations and control considerations from invoicers. Invoicers should also be able to select which sites could present bill and payment summaries, purchase orders, shipping documents, etc. Data should be provided in number of techniques to simplify retrieval and inclusion into other bill lists. The preferred embodiment includes provision of graphic images that are retrieved by the customer's browser as well as XML strings that are passed to secondary presentment partners.
Thus, there exists a need for a simple, straight forward system and method of automated electronic invoicing and payment that directly involves the invoicer and the customer while, at the same time, would allow customers to visit a invoicer's website through a single portal or bank site and review a summary of all of their bills and then visit invoicers' Web sites. Such a system would permit presentation of truly current data to the customer while, at the same time, provide timely payment to the invoicer. Also, since there is no need for a third party payment engine, the invoicer gains both lower cost per transaction and can control “branding” at the URL or portal rather than having to show the banner ads of a third party provider.